


Unrequited

by Lemur710



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Can be read as pre-Isabelle/Simon, Everyone has a crush on Magnus, Gen, M/M, References to emotional neglect and flawed parenting, References to yin fen, Written post 2A
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-09
Updated: 2017-03-09
Packaged: 2018-10-01 11:32:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10189013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lemur710/pseuds/Lemur710
Summary: “You’re quiet,” he said.“I’m lonely,” Isabelle replied, and for a moment, it felt more honest than any words she’d spoken since she was seven years old.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Written post-2A.  
> I have feelings about Isabelle and her brothers.

Standing on Magnus’s balcony, the city floated up to her. Honking horns, raised voices, stamping footsteps carried as if in drifting bubbles that popped only just as they reached her. She breathed in, knowing she should smell oil, exhaust, pollution, but sensing instead the air’s coolness; its crisp, winter sharpness. She opened her eyes to watch her exhale billow in a cloud.

Behind her, the party chimed on. Upbeat music played from somewhere—she never knew if Magnus had charmed an old radio to play throughout the loft, or if he just charmed the loft itself to play music. The beat twinkled, light and jazzy. None of the dense and pounding stuff he played at Pandemonium, music for anonymity and sweat. This was music for lightness and love.

They’d always played violin music at the parties in Idris growing up, dignified concertos written by a proper Shadowhunter composer. But more than anything else, Isabelle remembered the silk and lace embroidered tablecloths. As a little girl, she would crawl under them and hide. If she lined her eyes up just right, she could see faces through the delicate lace loops and watch the guests talk and eat. Desserts and savory treats layered a table from one end to the other. She could breathe in and still smell the exact blend of garlic, basil, and chocolate. But she wasn’t there for the sweets. She didn’t think she ever even tried to sneak one. Hidden under the table, through the infinitesimal spider webs of loose threads, she sought out her mother’s smile and strained her ears for her father’s laugh. She remembered feeling starved in a way she couldn’t describe, even if she’d had anyone to describe it to.

A loud laugh pierced the air and Isabelle turned to look in at the other guests. She pulled her jacket a little tighter around her as a chill breathed across her neck, though not nearly as cold as it should have been, she knew; another of Magnus’s enchantments. 

The party had broken into small clumps, groups of five-four-three-two engaged in cheery or intense conversation, mouths and hands moving, eyes riveted and fixed on one another. It was a good party. Magnus should be pleased. Simon and Clary stood off in a shadowed corner near the library, Luke and Jace talked with another vampire who looked even younger than Simon but she wore an old shawl and Isabelle had overheard her talking about where she’d been during the Bolshevik revolution. Simon and Clary caught her eye and each gave a small wave. Simon’s fangs hung over his bottom lip in a sweet, goofy smile. Isabelle waved back, then continued scanning for the brightest face.

She found herself staring at Alec. Alec wiping his eyes, teeth bared in a huge, helpless grin. Alec with his forehead pressed to Magnus’s shoulder as Magnus continued to talk, regal and contained, with a martini glass perched in one ringed hand. Only the curl at the corner of his mouth revealed he had any awareness of the effect he’d had on her brother. Alec’s own half-drunk cocktail—which was at least his third to Isabelle’s knowledge—rested on the coffee table in front of them. Alec stamped his foot, body jerking, his laughter finding no other way out as he wheezed breathlessly, and the curl at the corner of Magnus’s mouth turned to hide itself in the darkness of Alec’s hair. 

_I’m happy he’s happy_ , she thought, and turned back to the city.

They always found her under the table at those old parties. Her mother would pull her out, one perfectly manicured hand a vice around her wrist, runes bold against the red or blue or violet of her dress. She always looked like every queen Isabelle ever wanted to be. “You don’t need any more cakes,” she’d say, voice sweet as her smile sharpened. She’d glance around, worried what others would think, Isabelle knew that even then. She knew she’d failed to be right in some way that Alec knew how to be.

It was the nanny who would tuck her back into bed, too tight and too rough, because she had a scolding ahead of her, too, maybe docked pay or even firing, for letting her soft-limbed, round-faced charge out of her bedroom.

When she was seven, Isabelle planned and strategized. She listened to the chatter made dim by the walls; the creaking of footsteps made rhythmic by dancing; inhaled the scent of garlic, basil, and chocolate as violin music drifted through the air with the pipe smoke. She stuck bow-staff-bruised legs from beneath her covers and dropped to the plush rug on the floor. They’d been practicing stealth in her classes, so she stayed low and silent. For days, she’d been eyeing the route she could take to her table without being seen. She’d not even told Alec.

“If you don’t know why you’re crying, then you shouldn’t be crying at all,” her mother told her once. So when she crawled over and found the door locked from the outside, Isabelle sat on the plush rug and didn’t cry.

Magnus strolled out to her from the golden glimmer of the living room. “Are you warm enough, my dear?” he asked. His broad shoulders in their fine sheer fabric bristled at the chill. 

“I like the cold,” she said. The words came out rusty, so she coughed to clear her throat.

Magnus stood at the balcony beside her, gazing out like an emperor surveying his realm. She supposed he was, more than any of them, and glanced in to the rest of the party to see where her brother had gone. The couch was empty, as was Alec’s third cocktail, and she imagined the two were related.

She turned back to the city, the bright blackness dotted with billboard stars and headlight comets, and stood in peaceful silence with the High Warlock of Brooklyn. 

“You’re quiet,” he said.

“I’m lonely,” Isabelle replied, and for a moment, it felt more honest than any words she’d spoken since she was seven years old. 

“Well, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there’s a party inside. That might be the solution to your problem.” His shoulders swayed, delicate and graceful.

“It’s not.”

He let out a long sigh. “No, it’s not,” he agreed, going still. She watched his hand rest on the railing beside hers, red-polished fingers rubbing lightly, rings glinting. “So what has you out here in the cold feeling lonely?”

“Thinking mean things about my family.”

“Ah, that’s one of my hobbies. I do that all the time.”

“About my family or yours?”

Magnus let out a sincere laugh. “I meant mine, but I’ve thought quite a few mean things about yours, too.”

“Even about Alec?”

“Oh, especially about Alec. How could I not? He’s so stubborn sometimes, it’s a survival technique. So let’s hear it. Tell me all your mean thoughts.”

He meant it, insomuch as he could, might even have meant it completely and would have held her hand, unwavering, as she talked about the hurt. About watching two boys scurry about with the self-important seriousness of boys pretending to be men as they prepared for a sacred ceremony, two-becoming-one, while Isabelle wanted to scream _but we were three!_ Or worse, _we were two before_ you _got here_ , and she fought the glower edging her tears because Jace hurt, too. So she hugged him, called him brother, and grew up. Alone. Alone with her brothers. She pushed aside any desire she may ever have felt for a parabatai and couldn’t even be surprised when a memory demon pulled forth Alec’s most beloved and it wasn’t her. _“Where’s Alec?”_ and _“We have to find Jace,”_ and no one is ever, ever looking for Isabelle until it’s too late.

 _We were three_ , that makes a pair and a spare—Isabelle a dangling question, forever loving people who love other people just a bit more, “our sons. And Isabelle,” a chair pulled over to a table for two, or sitting at the kids’ table with Max while the men, the _parabatai_ , do important things she won’t understand. Because they left her out. Left her behind. Went together where she couldn’t follow when it had been _her_ sitting on Alec’s bed at seven years old helping him remember to how to laugh when their parents tried to make him forget.

The wind blew across the shell of her ear, hollow and close. “Doesn’t matter,” she said. “It is what it is.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Magnus’s handsome face soften, the makeup on his eyelids gorgeous and glimmering. One arm closed around her. His body was startlingly warm in the airy night and she let herself curve close into the sturdy heat of his shoulder.

That’s something she liked about Magnus; he understood even when he didn’t understand.

She longed for someone to hold her like this and mean it. 

Magnus’s heart beat against her ear, an unceasing drum playing a rhythm that was all his, a rhythm that would change but never end. “I think maybe I’m like you, Magnus,” she said. “My soulmate will be born a thousand years from now, I’ll just be dead.”

He squeezed her tighter, a hand rubbing up and down her arm like he might work out the wrinkles in her life. “I don’t put much stock in the idea of soulmates,” he said. 

“Alec does.” She felt the pause in his caress, and suddenly worried that she’d revealed a secret.

“Well, that’s...” he began, as a flush rose across his cheeks. 

She buried her face against the soft velvet of his vest. _I’m happy he’s happy_ , she thought.

“All the same,” he said, voice a little rough, “it’s always a gamble and there are no guarantees. You find someone that works, who is willing to work _with_ you, or you don’t. It's never easy."

“If you hadn’t been so crazy about Alec right from the start, I might have tried to get _you_.”

“Really?” Magnus said, thoughtful. “Hm. If I hadn’t been so crazy about Alec, you might have gotten me.”

“It wouldn’t have lasted, though.”

“No?”

“No. I don’t think I could be with a man who looks better than I do.”

“Oh, well then, things are looking up already,” Magnus said. “I’m the only man who ever could and even I only manage it some of the time.”

A low clang sounded as Alec’s alcohol-sloppy feet tripped on the doorframe. “Manage what?” he asked.

Isabelle loosened her grasp and let Magnus slide away. “Being as gorgeous as your sister,” he answered, dropping a gentle kiss on her forehead. She zipped her jacket up to its collar, already missing his warmth.

Alec stopped in his tracks, swaying slightly. He narrowed his eyes and blinked between the two of them. “I don’t know how to have an opinion on that.”

Isabelle laughed, but it felt sour. “You don’t have to have one, Alec. We all know you think Magnus is prettier than everybody.” 

“Yeah, but I—you’re pretty too, Izzy.”

“Magnus, stop him.”

“Gladly.” Magnus pressed a smiling kiss to Alec’s stuttering lips. Alec sank into it, hands easily rising to his boyfriend’s waist. Isabelle could see the word “soulmate” in Magnus’s eyes even if her brother couldn’t. 

She looked back to the glittering city and shivered in the cold air.

“Make me another drink?” Alec asked lowly, words punctuated by the wet click of lips. “With one of those red things in it?”

“If you’ve forgotten the word ‘cherry,’ I’ll be making you a Shirley Temple,” Magnus replied. “What can I get you, Isabelle? Martini? White Russian? Mai Tai?”

Isabelle smiled over her shoulder at them, but quickly looked away again. Concern showed too earnestly in Magnus’s eyes. “Nothing. Thanks.”

She listened to their footsteps and loving murmurs fade back into the party din. It was a strange thing to feel jealous of Magnus the way she’d sometimes felt jealous of Jace. All of Alec’s attention, all of Alec’s thoughts, to be his first concern all the time—his _only_ concern when the world is ending. 

Growing up, Alec hated anatomy and forensics. He only wanted to know the skeletal structure well enough to find the kill shots between ribs and breastbone, and his eyes glazed over whenever Isabelle talked about membranes and vacuoles. “How can you see anything?” he asked her, squinting into her microscope, lips turned down. She wanted to say, _The same way I see you’re blushing because that cute boy from rune studies is in the hallway_ , but she didn’t. Alec’s skill was seeing far. Isabelle’s was seeing close. Like the mutation causing the disease, or the smallest twitch of irritation on her mother’s lips that meant a punishment was coming. Or that her brother wasn’t ready to talk about the cute boy in the hallway.

Maybe that was her mistake: She’d stood too close. Alec gazed at Magnus like he’d never known love or devotion before, and Isabelle felt like she’d been an ocean pouring herself into a teacup. Like she’d been bleeding out for years, since the first day she’d smiled up at hazel eyes and understood the word “brother.”

“You know, before the wedding, I would never have pegged Alec for a PDA guy.”

Isabelle bristled as Simon walked toward her and she couldn’t decide if she appreciated the interruption or not. Her thoughts were going nowhere good, but the hurt was comforting, like the sting of an _iratze_. 

“He’s drunk.” She shrugged. “And it’s Magnus.”

“Yeah,” Simon said, letting out a dreamy sigh. “Magnus is probably a great kisser.”

Isabelle glanced at him, eyebrow raised.

“‘Cause he’s done it so much,” he explained. “He’s had all that practice.” He smiled, lopsided, with eyes bright. She missed his glasses a little.

“You think about kissing Magnus a lot?”

“I mean...I wouldn’t do it ‘cause Clary, and Magnus would probably turn me into a lizard, and I don’t like him that way, but yeah, I’ve thought about it—haven’t you?”

Isabelle turned to lean her back against the railing, looking to where Magnus and Alec stood by the bar, holding each other a touch too close for mixed company. “Yeah,” she admitted. She watched the upward curve of Alec’s mouth, that soft little smile, and thought, _I’m always going to love you more than you love me, aren’t I?_

“Can you taste this for me?” Simon asked, suddenly thrusting a china saucer beneath her nose. The center divot held a small, perfectly square slice of banana cake. 

“Taste it _for_ you?” 

“Yeah, I can’t really taste food anymore. Well, I can, it just doesn’t taste the same. Or at all, really—part of the whole ‘creature of the night’ deal, apparently.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.” She took the saucer and inspected the golden-brown crust.

“Yeah.” He nodded lightly, that brightness of his dimming slightly. “My mom made her challah during the holidays, too. That was a bummer. It tasted like cardboard. Used to be my favorite.” He shrugged, breathed in through his nose, and then smiled as if letting the mood drift away on his exhale. “But my sense of smell is stronger, so that’s cool. I could really smell the saffron this time. No one says, ‘you should stop and smell the challah,’ but they should.”

Isabelle shook her head lightly. Simon was strange, but it was a nice strange. A happy sort of strange. 

“That smells good, doesn't it?” he said, gesturing to the cake. “Do you like bananas? Clary doesn’t like bananas. That’s crazy, right? Otherwise, I’d ask her to try the cake, but she’d just tell me it tastes like bananas and she doesn’t like them.”

Isabelle brought the cake to her nose, breathing in deeply. Rich and thick, sugary with that warm, tropical smell.

“Magnus said it was a special recipe from when he was a kid, so I want to know how it tastes. I mean, a thousand-or-whatever-year-old banana cake recipe and he still remembers it? That’s got to be, like, Highlander-level epic. For a banana cake.”

He went abruptly silent when she gripped the sticky cake between two fingers and popped it in her mouth. His face lit, brow lifted in anticipation.

Isabelle chewed, let the warmth of the cake settle on her tongue, the sweetness bursting across her tastebuds, all with that earthy underscore of banana.

“So?” he asked. 

“It’s like Magnus in a cake,” she said, mouth full.

Simon stared at her. “I don’t know what that means. Magnus _in_ a cake, or Magnus _as_ a cake? Actually, I don’t know what either of those would mean.”

She swallowed, licking her lips. “It’s sweet, but not sugary. Warm. There’s some spicy heat in there.” Simon laughed. She shut her eyes, searching out the different notes and flavors in the darkness. “The banana makes it all taste...real. Like you can close your eyes and feel the sun through the trees.”

When Isabelle opened her eyes again, she saw Simon gazing at her, rapt and attentive. If, for a moment, his gaze lingered on her lips with a different kind of hunger, she’d never tell Clary.

“How was that?” she asked.

“Yeah, that was—” He coughed and tugged at his jacket. “That was really great. Thank you, Isabelle.”

“You’re welcome, Simon.”

He blinked at her a few times, expression warm and sincere. “I was thinking of you earlier while I was sleeping,” he said. “While I was _trying_ to sleep. That’s another thing about being a vampire. I miss the Channel 4 Bela Lugosi creature features, but now when I can’t sleep, it’s primetime! It was reruns today, but still, that’s pretty cool. There was this old episode of CSI on. Have you ever seen it?”

Isabelle shook her head. A honking horn drifted up to her ears, joining the laughter and music from inside.

“You’d like it. Maybe. I don’t really know you that well. But there’s this girl on it and she—she’s a woman—and she’s, like, okay, she was a stripper, but now she’s this forensic scientist, and it’s not like, ‘no, she’s can’t be a super-smart scientist, she’s too sexy,’ but it’s also not like, ‘no, she can’t be sexy ‘cause now she’s a super-smart scientist,’ so she’s like a super-smart scientist _and_ she’s sexy and it’s just like, yeah, that’s how she is. Like you. And plus, they do these cool shots like, _zooooom_ and they go inside brains and lungs and show you how someone’s kidneys exploded. I thought you might like that. I’m not explaining it well. You should watch it sometime.”

“I don’t know,” Isabelle said. “I might get angry if their science is wrong.”

“Oh, it’s really bad science.” He snorted. “I don’t know anything about science and I can tell you that.”

He met her eyes with a grin and Isabelle smiled back. It wasn’t a big smile, but it was the first one in a long time that felt real.

She wished it was Alec out here making her smile, or Jace. Or her mother, or her father. Maybe she always would. Maybe she’d always be starving in that way she couldn’t describe. But at least she wasn’t cloaking it in yin fen or Raphael anymore. At least she wasn’t angling for a bite. So she breathed in cold night air and chased that small, real smile. “What happened on the episode you watched today?” she asked.

“I barely know the characters’ names or anything. And my science will be totally wrong.”

“That's okay. I want to hear you tell it.”

“Okay,” Simon said eagerly, like he’d been waiting for this all day. “So there was this explosion at a trailer park—which is...do you know what a trailer park is? Stop me if I say some Mundane thing that doesn’t make sense. But okay, they’re at this trailer park that, like, _exploded_! Or this one trailer did anyway. And one guy was like, ‘it’s a trailer park, so it’s probably meth,’ and someone else was, like, ‘it’s not always meth,’ but it was meth. At least, I think it was. I might have fallen asleep in the middle of this one, now that I think about it...”

Isabelle relaxed against the balcony railing, listened to the bustle of the city and the tinkling of glasses, and let a silly vampire remind her how to laugh.


End file.
